The San Antonio Spurs, perched atop the Western Conference as they are, 1½ games ahead of the Oklahoma City Thunder, don’t necessarily have a lot to prove here in the final three weeks of the regular season.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t get a chance—thanks to the vagaries of NBA scheduling. The Spurs are looking at a few days that will offer up four playoff-level challenges, including one that stands as a possible Finals preview.

Starting Wednesday, the Spurs will play four opponents with a combined winning percentage of .707, including the three teams currently locked in a battle for the No. 3 seed in the West.

The doozy comes Sunday, when the Miami Heat wrap up their four-game road trip at the AT&T Center. The Heat, of course, have won 27 straight, and by the time they visit the Spurs, they could be trying for No. 30.

While Miami has been the focus of the NBA universe in recent weeks, the Spurs are only 3.0 games back in the overall race for best record in the league. This bunch of Spurs knows a thing or two about streaks, too—including an 11-gamer this season, San Antonio has had six streaks of 10 or more wins in the last three seasons.

“You take it a game at a time,” Spurs forward Tim Duncan said. “I don’t think anybody goes into any streak saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to go ahead and make a run of 20-some-odd in a row.’ You take it game-by-game, and it kind of builds.

“Obviously you start feeling good about yourself and what you’re doing, and it kind of dominoes from there. (Denver and Miami) are playing really well and at a great time of the year. It’ll be great games at home.”

One X-factor in all of this for the Spurs is, as always, the gamesmanship of coach Gregg Popovich.

After the Nuggets, Clippers and Heat, the Spurs go travel to play the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday, which means that in a span of six days, San Antonio will play against three teams it could almost certainly face in the second round of the postseason.

Remember, before the Heat hosted San Antonio in late November, Popovich sent home stars Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. He could choose to rest some combination of those three against the West teams his Spurs could play in the postseason, just to throw a monkey wrench into the scouting reports. Or he could rest players for the Miami game, hoping that he will see them again in June.

But maybe Popovich and the Spurs will go all out for all four of these games.

The team is healthy now, and typically coaches don’t start resting players for another week or 10 days. This is a veteran bunch, and they’ve played well enough this season to be considered a title contender no matter how things shake out between now and Monday.

But if Popovich fields his whole roster against four of the league’s best teams, the Spurs will at least be in for a very entertaining few days.